Boycott Target!

Hey everyone. I'm a fan of the movement to Boycott Target for a number of reasons. I think Citizens United was bad decision. I think corporations are indeed citizens and should have a right to free speech, but they do not (and should not) have a right to vote, and (whether they are trying to get a Republican, Democrat, or Independent candidate elected,) they should not have a right to free speech when it comes to elections. The U.S. has a legitimate interest in curbing their free speech when it comes to elections.

We live in a capitalist society, and corporations only speak in the language of $$$. Therefore, the only way for every-man Americans like you and me to communicate our displeasure with Corporations (and indirectly our displeasure with the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United) is through movements such as this boycott.

I encourage everyone to view the videos after the jump below and Boycott Target!

Time for DNA (at least me) to weigh in on the Mosque at Ground Zero Issue. It really is an interesting issue. Recently, I've come to think the wholesale dismissal of arguments to move the Islamic center (which I was guilty of until about a week ago) isn't entirely warranted. I agree that no government should interfere with the building of a mosque (or any other form of harmless religious expression) no matter what. If I had to rank the amendments to the Constitution, the First would be first (followed closely by the Fourteenth). But I do disagree with the assertion that "there is NO good argument" against the builders of the mosque themselves moving it to a different site than the former-Burlington Coat Factory two blocks north of the WTC. A few good arguments discussion points below....

Cats & Dogs 3? All-Star Duo take down Prop 8.

A well covered, but still most-fascinating aspect of Prop 8 litigation, (at least from a soon-to-be legal professional's opinion,) is the all-star duo that is representing the plaintiff-respondents (the gays) in the courts. Super heavyweights of the legal profession, Ted Olson  and David Boies faced off in 2000 in Bush v. Gore. Olson, a conservative juggernaut bested Boies, the liberal hero, in that case. In this case, they're teamed up and won round 1 against the State of California. It's shockingly similar to Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.

Sherley Sherrod v. Fox News, et al?

John W. Dean had a very interesting post on July 9th over at FindLaw's Writ Blog called "Should Sherley Sherrod sue Andrew Breitbart and Fox News?" This post gave very good reasons why Ms. Sherrod should NOT sue Breitbart and Fox News. It took me a while to find it because I have been so busy fantasizing about bringing that exact suit on behalf of Ms. Sherrod against Fox News and Breitbart.

See more details of my fantasy and my thoughts on Dean's post after the jump.

Healthcare, Curing the Disease not the Symptoms; Pt. 3: Prevention is Key

From the previous post, it would seem that the U.S. healthcare system is more than capable enough to cure and treat the health needs of the country. So why is it then that we get such bad results and in turn spend so much more money than any other country for those results? The answer I think is

Healthcare, Curing the Disease not the Symptoms; Pt. 2: Checking the Rankings

Dr. Mark Hyman wrote last month in his Huffington Post article, Why Health Care Reform Will Fail: Part I -- The Business of Disease: We Pay For What Doesn't Work, "Recently President Obama's rhetoric has shifted from health care reform to health insurance reform. "Getting more people access to a system that provides worse outcomes at higher costs is not an option for a sustainable health care system, nor a sustainable economy." The significance of this statement is that not only are we focusing too much energy on trying to reign in costs rather than quality and delivery, but also

Australian vs. American Healthcare Systems

This is a great article from John Hempton's blog Bronte Capital called, Health Care Reform and Single Payer- an Australian Perspective. There is some great insight as the author offers his perspective as an Australian who has experienced both systems. He covers an overview of how the Australian system works, the pros (savings and results), the cons (wait times, doctor salaries), and also how these observations apply to the United States.

One point that I found interesting was in the section on why Australia's system would not necessarily work in the States, at the end of the article.

The outcomes in Australia are surprisingly good – but they depend at least
in part on the fact that Australia is small. Australia can shave margins for
research driven medical products to very low levels because the research is not
funded from Australia. If the US were to push margins too low they would crimp
medical research.

This makes me wonder how much the healthcare systems of places like Canada, the U.K., and Australia are in a way subsidized by the U.S. system. If these countries are able to have the results that they enjoy in part due to research done in the U.S. where there are better profit incentives, what would happen if the U.S. no longer provided those incentives? Hempton does point out that, from an investing perspective (Bronte Capital is primarily an investment blog) the medical industry would be hurt from such reform. He says of the Australian system, "suppliers in general get squeezed." Canada would be even more interesting to look at from this angle as they are so close to the United States. So there may be drugs and treatments not as easily available in Canada as in the States. Thus, a Canadian could go south of the border and the Canadian system sees the savings of not having to spend on the treatment (while the drug company will still see the profits). As a specific example, I know of a Breast Cancer treatment drug called Herceptin which has not been approved by Health Canada. So Canadians for whom this treatment is necessary must seek treatment in the U.S.

Some other points of interest from the article and the Australian system are the inability to discriminate against pre-existing conditions or age. Also the private insurance in Australia,

was originally and remains almost entirely community rated. That means that
a private health insurance company charges the same amount to a 31 year old as a
75 year old... and it is still not age rated provided you took out private
health insurance before you were 30 and you maintain it continuously. If you
took it out for the first time at 35 you will pay a “five year surcharge” for
the rest of your life.

Also, somebody pointed out in the comments, reiterated in the post, the problem with the U.S. tort system and the costs that those impose. Hempton says, "Insurance premiums are MUCH cheaper for Australian doctors and that benefit is passed on to patients."

The Bush Legacy

There've been a plethora of Blogs, Op-Eds, and articles such as this Time piece popping up all over the internet calling for legal action against President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other high-ranking members considered authors of The Bush Doctrine. "The United States of America does not torture," Bush told us with as straight a face as he can achieve. But that was clearly a lie, and the atrocities that have (and probably are) taking place in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and most recently at Bagram, Afghanistan (discussed in this Time article) are stains on America that will outlive the Bush Presidency if the next Administration does not address the situation.

Krugman on the Republican party

This is a recent opinion piece in the New York Times by Paul Krugman:

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners. ...

[M]ost of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply ... bad luck... The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years ... is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it ... rested on contempt for government in general. ... So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater ... explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman,... a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some ... that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated ... for more than a generation.

The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not ... fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures ... as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

It seems as if Krugman is making a huge generalization of what went wrong with the Republican party, and worst of all is that that generalization is pointing towards racism. Among all this theorizing in the media as to "what happened to the Republican party," there's not nearly enough attention placed on the fact that historically when the country is in a recession, the incumbent party does not win and furthermore the Democratic party had a once in a lifetime candidate in Barack Obama who, with almost entirely his words, was able to excite a huge majority of the nation. There were elections that probably went Democrat simply because of the voters that came out for Obama and not because of the racist "Southern Strategy" that apparently is predominant in the G.O.P.

This talk of the financial crisis discrediting Republican policy is something else that really bothers me, particularly on the point of tax cuts. We won't get any where as a country if these partisan tactics of as soon as something goes wrong blame it on the other party and support the apparent failure of their policies as proof that yours are best. It seems ridiculous to me to say that the support for smaller government and lower taxes comes as a result of racism, when there is plenty of evidence to show that well targeted tax cuts spur business and investment growth and in many cases not only decrease government revenue by less than expected but can also increase revenue (capital gains tax). I haven't seen any evidence of tax cuts being the cause of the current crisis, maybe deregulation to a certain extent but not tax cuts, and it is misleading to the public to say that since this happened when we lowered taxes, we should therefore increase them. In my view, there are times for tax cuts and there are times for tax increases.

Overall, I think what happened to the G.O.P. is partly just the continuing of a historical trend and also of a country sick of devisive partisan politics which tries to appeal to racial differences and religious extremism. However, it does not point to any fundamental flaw (or racism) in the conservative policies of smaller government. I think what both parties need to understand is that there is both a time and a place for government, and until this competitive urge to prove the other party wrong above all else is overcome, the swing of the political pendulum from one party to the other will continue.